Figures released by the online valuation and mapping service VesselsValue.com, show that Nakilat, which is the biggest LNG transporter in the world, owns a fleet of 25 vessels with a total value of approximately $5.4billion.
The Qatar owner is also involved in a series of joint ventures, which include deals with Greece’s Maran Gas and Germany’s Pronav. The combined total of vessels from their joint ventures is valued at $2.6 billion.
The most valuable ship in the world is a QMAX LNG vessel, the 266,433-cbm Zarga which is valued at $236.5m. It was built at South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries and delivered to Nakilat in 2010.
VesselsValue.com CEO Richard Rivlin says large LNG carriers, circa 170,000-cbm capacity, have commanded the highest newbuild prices of all the cargo ship types over the past three years and also account for the higher second-hand prices on the VesselsValue system.
“Therefore, because QMAX and QFLEX which are 266,000-cbm and 210,000-cbm also carry LNG but are even larger in capacity than a typical Large LNG carrier we use out size curves to calculate a price that they may be worth, which comes to an even higher valuation than a Large LNG,” Rivlin explained.
Rivlin, who is also the CEO of London-based brokers Seasure, says given that the last new QMAX and QFLEX were delivered in 2010 and with no second hand sale prices reported for those types, there are no actual recent market deals to help determine what the real second hand market price might actually be.
“Moreover whilst there have been a lack of transactions for these ship types in the last four years, Large LNGs have been ordered and re-sold in numbers that suggest these are currently the preferred LNG vessel size,” Rivlin said. Further figures released by VesselsValue.com show that the top 19 per cent of the most valuable vessels account for 50 per cent of the global fleet value.
Although Nakilat’s ships are the highest valued, Qatar does not rank in the first ten countries with most vessels in the top 19 per cent.
Greece leads that list with 892 vessels in the top 19 per cent, for a total value of approximately $53 billion.
They are followed by Japan $44.5billion, China $30billion, Norway $21billion and Germany $20billion.
